Created in Birmingham

There’s been a little flurry of blog posts from BCU’s Interactive Cultures team announcing a few events and such, including:

• Animation Explosion 2011
• Creative Enterprise Conference
• The Online Mainline

There’s also a set of Creative Metropoles Case Studies which looks interesting (if you like that sort of thing) and features a range of European projects, including the Advantage Creative Fund, Custard Factory and Fazeley Studios office spaces, the PLOT Project and Brilliantly Birmingham from our own fair city.

Meanwhile, the other day, D’log posted about some notes about some other articles including some mentions of Birmingham in a paper called “Enabling and Inhibiting the Creative Economy: The Role of the Local and Regional Dimensions in England“.

Capital’s first Festival of New Writing took place, International Project Space launched a new film programme and the final ARC of 2010 took place with Important Artefacts.

Brilliantly Birmingham kicked off together with the fifth annual FLUX exhibition, Aedas Presents launched a new monthly art programme and Art of Ideas finally arrived with a host of associated events running over four days.

The We Are Birmingham Shop opened its doors with a drinks reception, Chris gave a debrief of the Arts Council briefing on funding and the West Midlands creative jobs board, Jobplot, returned with a fresh makeover.

November also saw the launch of The Pilot Project, Jennifer Tee’s exhibition, Memento Park opened at Eastside Projects, and Chris attended the wedding of the year.

Lucy McLauchlan returned with her paintbrushes to add something a little interesting to the Moseley Road hoardings, while VIVID launched their latest project, Language, and as December approached, the Christmas fairs sprung into action.

As winter kicked in, we bid a Blonde Farewell to Ikon Eastside, got crafty with Craftspace, said hello to Creative Central and looked ahead to Flatpack and Fierce’s joint 2011 venture.

Au & Ag opens with a preview at Trove on 16 December, showcasing work by Vicky Cull and Justine Moss, in association with Brilliantly Birmingham and Museum of Lost Heritage.

Focusing on gold (Au) and silver (Ag), Cull’s work takes on silver, responding in particular to its ‘noble’ connotations with queens, armoury, medals etc. While Moss works with gold,  creating chandelier sculptures from gold jewellery.

The exhibition will be open by appointment between 13th and 22nd December 2010. For further information, read more on Trove’s website.

Brilliantly Birmingham is kicking off on 27 November, celebrating contemporary jewellery from local, national and international designer makers for the 11th consecutive year, through until 9 January.

With a programme of workshops, special events and free exhibitions, including a ‘Treasure Trail’ of exhibitions at venues across the city, visitors will be taken on a journey of jewellery making, from initial concept to finished product.

This year’s profiled designer is Birmingham City University Graduate Li-Chu Wu whose original paper jewellery was chosen from seven candidates. Her designs consist of a series of one-off wearable paper pieces and body adornments created using a mix of metalsmithing and new technique.

The fifth annual FLUX will also be held throughout the festival, showcasing and selling the work of new and emerging designer makers at mac.

Call for Participants: The slightest movement, Fierce & Quarantine

Quarantine, in partnership with Fierce, are hosting a project entitled The Slightest Movement, bringing together groups of strangers to create a temporary community which openly debates difference, exploring tolerance and ‘otherness’.

The task is repeated every day for a week.  Each day the event is re-invented according to what happened the day before.  A small group grows into a large one, gathering more and more strangers into a temporary – perhaps uneasy – community.

The slightest movement will take place 20-25 September in West Bromwich, and are inviting a core group of 15 people, both artists and non-artists, irrespective of background and experience to join this project. If you fancy getting involved, apply using the application via their website www.qtine.com by 3 September.

Autumn Exhibition Opportunity – Call for Designer Makers, Brilliantly Birmingham

This year’s Brilliantly Birmingham festival is taking place  27 November 2010 – 9 January 2011, and is set to visit a variety of venues across the city, including the Flux exhibition of contemporary jewellery design at the mac.

A dynamic and ambitious exhibition of new and emerging designer makers will promote challenging and diverse new work, create a marketplace and contribute to the city as a visitor attraction.

Flux is currently open to submissions from emerging designer makers based in the UK, who are no more than five years out of graduation. There’s no exhibition fee, but submissions have a £20 admin fee.

Application packs can be downloaded from www.brilliantlybirmingham.com and must be submitted by 3 September.

I like these and there’s a couple more springing up soon.

Brilliantly Birmingham will have a temporary shop at the Pavillions from 5-24 December.

Some of the designers selling their work in the Pavilions include designers from Design Space, an incubation scheme in the Jewellery Quarter which was set up by Birmingham City Council to support new talent in the area

Meanwhile quite literally everyone else has pointed out that the Swifty Pop-Up Shop will be at the Sauce Gallery at the Custard Factory from 10 Dec to 10 Jan. Swifty is a typographer, artist and sleeve designer – he worked at The Face before later becoming art editor at Straight No Chaser.

OH. MY. SWEET. LORD. I’ve just found out he did the ‘If in doubt play Stevie’ print that I once saw years ago and have hankered after ever since. Ok, I’m excited about this now.

The shop will sell:

Everything from originals and one off prints to T-shirts, skateboards and stickers

But whatever, I just want that print. Oh aye, Punch Records are involved with this one too. Here’s a pic:

Another Birmingham institution makes it into double figures this month – Brilliantly Birmingham, the international contemporary jewellery festival, is celebrating its first decade from 21 November to 28 February.

There’ll be two exhibitions at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery:

• FLUX, the annual selling show which attracts international entries from new and emerging designers, and
• A 10th Anniversary Retrospective featuring the work of seven designers whose work has headlined previous festivals (including Mikaela Lyons, a recent MA graduate from BCU’s School of Jewellery)

The programme will also include:

• Paradigma, an international exchange between Birmingham School of Jewellery (BCU) and the Escola Massana, Barcelona
• A series of professional development seminars sponsored by Business Link and the Assay Office, which is also running a special open day for the public
• ‘Walks in the Quarter’ and Open Workshops
• Exhibitions by individual designer makers such as James Newman and Sara Preisler and a collaboration with Birmingham City University’s New Generation Arts 2010

More info on the Brilliantly Birmingham website.

There seems to be a few jewellery-related things on at the moment. Brilliantly Birmingham is ongoing until 21 December (although it’s a little hard to tell what’s happening and where from the website) and now there’s a new website for BCU’s School of Jewellery.

It looks like this:

Couple of things:

• the RSS feed for the news is practically invisible and doesn’t work anyway.
• how about giving the students run of the news or an associated blog? There must be so much jewellery-related stuff happening in this city that’s going unreported and that’s as much a shame as it is an opportunity.

• David Barrow’s northern soul paintings at St Pauls Gallery
  “An exclusive exhibition of David Barrow’s Wigan Casino paintings will open on
  21st November”
• West Midlands Media Top 100 | daveharte.com
  Dave Harte raises the prospect of a West Mids media top 100 to include people from “TV, radio, the press and publishing, film and production, new media, PR and advertising. NOT the arts” who can do they own thang
• Digbeth Community Arts Project
  Nicky copies and pastes the first draft of a project brief for a community arts project in Digbeth
• No Girls Allowed! Come and Sing – Workshop for Men
  “Do you enjoy singing, or have enjoyed singing in the past? Come along to a FREE singing workshop for men with the CBSO’s inspirational and world-renowned Chorus Director, Simon Halsey, and singers from the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus” It’s on Tues 25 Nov, 6.45-8.15pm
• Brilliantly Birmingham
  D’log sez “Brilliantly Birmingham has turned their main website (which I remember as being a dark-toned affair) into a deliciously light and fresh weblog…”
• A short history of a Birmingham-based Acid Jazz band
  Antonio Roberts follows the trail of the recently defunct Kanopus
• Welcome to The Drum
  Made Media have launched The Drum’s new website. Very nice it is too. Go check out their events
• Rich Batsford – Valentine Court free download
  Rich has put up his album of melodic, meditative piano music up for download

Brilliantly Birmingham is:

showcases the work of local, national and international designer makers through a full programme of exhibitions, workshops and special events. All exhibitions are free of charge and the festival promises to be a fascinating insight into jewellery-making today

will take place at a variety of venues across the city and region from 28th November 2008 – 21st December 2008.

Incidentally, is there anyone regularly blogging (or reporting in any way) about jewellery in Birmingham?  I’ve not spotted anyone on my wanderings and would love to know if I’ve missed someone.